Women still lonely at the top in Indian Boardrooms
From having several female banking CEOs a decade ago, only one public sector bank – Union Bank of India - has a woman CEO today. Foreign banks Standard Chartered India and Bank of America stand out as exceptions for having female CEOs. But, of the 142 listed BFSI (banking and financial services) companies in the NSE-1000, only seven are led by women.
Among the top local banks, ICICI Bank has a woman among its key managerial personnel. The situation is worse in the case of the Indian IT industry, with none of the 54 companies in the NSE-1000 index having a female CEO. Market leader TCS , which employs more than 200,000 women (constituting over a third of its workforce), has no women in its key managerial personnel (KMPs), as per its annual report. In fact, among the top 5 IT companies, only WIPRO has a woman in KMP role. All the women on the boards of the top-five IT companies are independent or non-executive directors. According to the disclosures made by NSE-1000 companies in their 'Business Responsibility & Sustainability Report' for FY23 the overall diversity ratio of all listed companies was 18%, but the IT industry was almost double that at 35% and BFSI sector was at 23%.
